


second breath

by tree_tops



Category: TWICE (Band)
Genre: some kind of absolutely bastardized and loosely adapted version of rurouni kenshin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-25
Updated: 2020-01-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:48:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22405240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tree_tops/pseuds/tree_tops
Summary: It was a downpour that brought them together.
Relationships: Chou Tzuyu/Kim Dahyun
Comments: 2
Kudos: 44





	second breath

It was a downpour that brought them together. 

Tzuyu had hiked out for some supplies for Jeongyeon, who had fallen sick after trying to nurse another girl to health. And then, as her luck would have it, she’d gotten caught in the middle of what seemed like a never-ending flood. Padded down to the nearest signboard she could see amidst the droplets streaking down, beating at her eyes.

When she’d settled in, cramped at a table with a stranger with a small, delicate frame, Tzuyu hadn’t meant to stare at the stranger’s scar. But there was something magnetic about it, Tzuyu thought. It was a pretty one, faded with what Tzuyu imagined must have been much time, a sheer cross adorning the other girl’s cheek. She ate with little fanfare, snipping her noodles at the root before slurping at them softly. And then she’d looked up, right into Tzuyu’s curious eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said, sincerely, for it was only polite to apologize, at the very least. “I - I did not mean to offend you, only that -”

Then the other girl had smiled. A soft, guileless one that made Tzuyu’s stomach roll endlessly. She was - pretty, Tzuyu thought. In a different way from the girls in her town, and almost handsome, angular features constellating into what Tzuyu dreamed the boys in her school would grow up into.

“It is no matter at all,” the girl said, a smile in her voice, and her voice was - surprising. Rough in the middle, but so very gentle at the edges. “Most do not ever apologize, so perhaps one must thank you instead, for encouraging one’s vanity and being so kind about one’s unpleasant accessory.”

“It’s very pretty,” Tzuyu had blurted out, and the stranger paused. Looked up at Tzuyu with something like careful confusion, like she was afraid, almost, of Tzuyu. Tzuyu, in her worn-out clothes and scraggly bun sitting atop her head, sniffling endlessly and looking for all the world like she would topple over if someone pushed her.

Then, the stranger adjusted her arm, and Tzuyu spotted something at the ball of her shoulder. A bright red patch, only growing as she looked. She sucked in a careful breath.

“You’re bleeding.”

The other girl looked down at where Tzuyu was pointing, her demeanour barely changing. 

“Oh,” she said, and there was enough in there to be genuine surprise, but too little to suggest that it was the first time she’d inadvertently hurt herself, only to find out much later. “This silly one sees.”

And the rational, smart voice in Tzuyu’s head suggested that she could well be a vagrant, or a criminal, or something even worse than that, but she just - didn’t seem like it. Tzuyu knew it was silly, judging a book by its cover, but the war was long over, and people who hurt or killed each other didn’t walk around like this in broad daylight anymore. Much less a spiry girl who couldn’t have been much taller than her students and who spoke so circularly that Tzuyu struggled to keep up.

“One lifted a cat from a tree, on one’s way here,” the girl said, a smile back on her face, and Tzuyu stared at her in confusion. “One supposes a branch might have caught on one’s careless shoulder! No matter -”

Tzuyu couldn’t decide if she should believe her, but her heart was telling her something entirely foolish, and silly, and Tzuyu thought - it would be okay, this one time, to listen to it. A harmless indulgence before they would go their separate ways, the other girl probably on her way to a different town. So she reached for the wooden box she’d tucked under her seat, reeling it up by the cloth straps. 

“I think you should - “ Tzuyu drew a long piece of cloth from her box, the same one that Jeongyeon always used to tend to wounds. “Please accept this.”

The stranger paused, only for a moment. Then her small hands reached for Tzuyu’s cloth delicately, but Tzuyu resisted.

“I’ll put it on for you. It’s hard for your shoulder to -”

“Oh, then one will be more than fine,” the stranger said. Her voice was soft, her eyelashes fluttering endlessly as she looked down abruptly. “One should not accept such a generous gift -”

Tzuyu frowned down at the ratty piece of cloth, and found herself holding in a disbelieving laugh. “I believe it will be no trouble. And it would cause me much grief, to let someone who rescued an animal walk out without what she needs.”

Then the stranger looked up, her eyes flashing with something that Tzuyu couldn’t make out at all - Tzuyu had never been good at reading people, that much she was sure of, but the stranger’s face seemed to shift through a million expressions at once before settling on a smile, warm and real.

“Then allow this grateful one to pay for these meals,” the stranger said. “Or grief, too, will be mine.”

  
The rain stopped in the eighth hour of the evening, or somewhere thereof, and Tzuyu stepped out into the cold mist that gathered after the rain. The stranger had, after much insistence, paid for their meals, and they had walked together, out to the fork in the road that winded away to their destinations.

While they had walked, the stranger had donned a large straw hat that made her face look even smaller, and Tzuyu couldn’t help but laugh, in that moment, a bellied one that made her fold just a little forward, as the stranger looked on with amused confusion in her eyes.

“One should hope to - to visit you, somehow,” the stranger started, and Tzuyu felt something that felt horribly like hope surge inside her chest. The stranger’s face faltered. “Only if - it would be so desired, and only if one could hope not to impose, never to impose -”

And then Tzuyu reached out, fingers wrapping gently around the stranger’s wrist. Traced the line of her arm up, until it ended at the messily-tied ends of Tzuyu’s bandage.

“Ask for a Chou Tzuyu,” she said, carefully, as the stranger smiled. “And what name should I call out, if I were to see you in the distance?”

The stranger stared back at her, then, gaze heavy for the first time that evening. Tzuyu’s fingers tightened around her wooden box. Perhaps she had been too forward - too unlike herself -

“Kim Dahyun,” the girl said, finally, with a soft smile, and Tzuyu felt as if she had been let in on a secret, hidden in the crevices of the other girl’s heart. Handed over carefully to Tzuyu, to be kept safe. “If you ever wish to call this humble one’s name.”

/

  
When Tzuyu returned home, when Jeongyeon had been nursed back to health, she told her about the stranger. And Jeongyeon thought the story was ridiculous. Even more so after Tzuyu told her about the fact that Tzuyu noticed, as Dahyun walked away, that the other girl was carrying a sword, even as guns have become the ubiquitous weapon of choice for any respectable man.

“Those are outlawed now,” Jeongyeon said, fanning out another wet robe over the bamboo poles. “You were talking to an outlaw. Is that what you want to do? Let the outlaw find you, and then your school will be shut down, and then - ”

Tzuyu shook her head, drowning Jeongyeon’s voice out. Sometimes it felt like a fever dream, and other times it was - real. Dahyun’s hand in her own, her careful arm held up so high until Tzuyu told her that she didn’t have to, that Tzuyu had more than enough space to wrap the bandage around her shoulder. Dahyun’s smile, as she lingered, refusing to go until Tzuyu had arrived at the part of her town where the lanterns would guide her home.

Time wheeled on, then, and Dahyun became more and more of a dream, a little valley in Tzuyu’s life.

Until Dahyun arrived just in time. 

They were starting to live on the edge, Tzuyu knew. On the edge of goodwill, one which their new landlord certainly did not have towards her, and the students at the school were whittling down in number, and Jeongyeon’s patients didn’t have enough to pay for both her and Tzuyu’s expenses.

So it was only a matter of time, Tzuyu thought, that they would come knocking, and come they did, in the middle of a lesson, shouting and banging at her doors.

Tzuyu had always been aware of her skills, even if she were stubborn, and she would have let them have it, all of it - except, except when they started breaking the sign boards. Except for the wooden swords. Except for her students, who were still on the way home, hurled around by the ends of their clothes. Then they had made for her, too, and she was keenly aware that the law would not care to rescue or bring justice to a girl like her, with no parents and no one powerful enough to save her. Jeongyeon would try, of course, but somehow that thought was even worse than the first, and Tzuyu wishes that she wouldn’t, that if she had to go - if she were to be taken away, that Jeongyeon wouldn’t carry out a suicide mission.

So she had entertained, for a moment, the possibility of fighting to the death, or biting her tongue before she let them carry her away without a fight, and do what they would with her.

And then Dahyun had strolled in, Tzuyu’s cloth in her hand, eyes widening at the scene in front of her.

  
It wasn’t what Dahyun did that was scary. It was at first, when Tzuyu thought she had killed all of them, but it was when she heard their keening that she realized they were alive and well, saw their robes, clean and unbloodied. Saw Dahyun sheath her sword, the insides of her feet pressed together in perfect form. 

What was - disorienting, was the way Dahyun looked at her, after dispatching all those men. It was the way she looked as if Tzuyu would never want to be near her again, even as Tzuyu drew closer. Even as Tzuyu came to stand before her, her hand halfway to Dahyun’s cheek.

“Did this unruly one terrify you?” Dahyun asked, finally, as Jeongyeon came running in, the shouts dying in her throat at the litter of men lying around them, a crop maze extending endlessly outwards. Tzuyu thought of Dahyun’s eyes, flashing dangerous when she took in the sight before her. The way her hand had flown to the handle of her sword. The clean, overwhelming crack of her sword meeting bone, one after another, faster than Tzuyu’s eyes could see. Yet, somehow, Tzuyu thought, tracing the line of Dahyun’s cheek, the soft skin at her collar, her hands, flexing and unflexing by her sides -

“No,” Tzuyu said, truthfully, and it was only then that Dahyun dared to look back up at her. At the hand that was in abeyance, between the two of them. Tzuyu wanted her to know that she wasn’t lying. That she wasn’t going to drive her away, not for saving their lives.

Then Jeongyeon cleared her throat impossibly loudly, and the moment was broken.

“Anyone want to tell me what happened here?”

  
/

  
For the most part, Dahyun took to tending to the school like a fish to water. She was infinitely better than Tzuyu at cooking - something which Jeongyeon never stopped pointing out, and endlessly gentle with the younger students, letting them clamber all over her after lesson times. 

And she was an excellent gardener, Tzuyu noticed, even though she herself had let the overgrown weeds eat at their premises - it was always the least of their problems, Tzuyu had thought, Jeongyeon had agreed, and Dahyun had promptly ignored, crouching over every vine and snipping carefully at them with her gigantic scissors.

Tzuyu found herself staring, sometimes. But there was nothing to it, only that Dahyun was a new part of their little home, and Tzuyu was - Tzuyu was just getting used to her, that was all. She only looked a little too hard sometimes, when Dahyun was practicing in the room and hardly making a sound on the wooden planks under her feet. Or when Dahyun was fanning at the fire, and Tzuyu watched, learning how to cook fish that wouldn’t burn. At the sinewy veins that ran down her arms every time she rolled her sleeves up to get a better angle. At the stretch of the muscles on her back, when she forwent the robe for a simple, thin shirt. At her careful hands and thin waist when she stepped out of their shared bath, hair falling wet over her shoulders. Tzuyu did not blush. She made sure of that.

And they would - speak, over meals. In the moments of leisure, and rest, and Tzuyu would watch Dahyun’s eyes dart towards the open arc, as if the landlords would come running in again.

It would be about nothing, most of the time, but Tzuyu felt somehow that it was about everything. Dahyun never told her anything about herself, not about her sword, or her scar, and Tzuyu found that she did not mind, so much. That Dahyun had ideas, and wanted to talk about the carrots at the market, or the carps that she found walking back along the stream, the colours on their scales changing in the water and the wind. 

Then Dahyun had brought her out, later, to a big, gasping garden, over a wall that Dahyun had no difficulty climbing, and with which Tzuyu had far more. Dahyun balanced a light in her hand, a jar of fireflies that lit the path in front of them, Tzuyu’s hand careful in Dahyun’s own. Dahyun had laid two pillows carefully on the collection of pebbles scattered neatly across the floor, and looked at Tzuyu carefully, brightly, like Tzuyu was all the constellations in the sky.

“This uneducated one had once learned about the stars,” Dahyun started, when Tzuyu had settled down beside her. The night slid darkness over the both of them, and Tzuyu was thankful for it as she felt a blush rising up in her cheeks. 

“But one must confess that one has forgotten all about them.”

And Tzuyu had barked out a laugh, then, caught unawares. Turned to look at Dahyun, who was already staring at her, eyes wide with a kind of tenderness that shot through Tzuyu’s chest. She looked away, and back up at the stars, even as Dahyun didn’t move. Then Dahyun started to make up stories - ones that were so real and vivid that Tzuyu started to suspect that Dahyun was lying about having forgotten. Still, she had gone on and on, and Tzuyu listened, the pitter-patter of her heart quiet and endless in her ears.

“Don’t you think it’s strange?”

Tzuyu hummed. “What is?”

“Tzuyu,” Jeongyeon said, sternly, and Tzuyu looked up to meet her annoyed gaze. Jeongyeon tended to hover, Tzuyu knew, but she was also concerned with reason, most of the time. Tzuyu just thought - well, Tzuyu didn’t think much when it came to Dahyun. At the moment, she was just a swordswoman of old who was infinitely better than Tzuyu, and Tzuyu would let her be that until she wanted to tell her more.

“You’re being unreasonable.”

“I am,” Tzuyu admitted, without reservation, and Jeongyeon paused. Looked straight at her.

“You’re falling -”

“No,” Tzuyu said, firmly this time, looking up even as her hands kneaded uselessly at Dahyun’s dark blue robe. She’d insisted on doing this too, but Tzuyu would be damned if she let her. 

“Then explain why you’re being like - like this,” Jeongyeon sputtered, a little incoherently, but Tzuyu understood. She was reasonable, most of the time. Rational, and good, and willing to do what was right. But Dahyun wasn’t something that was wrong - she was helping them, and living alongside them. Even if they had no idea who she was, or where she’d come from, or what motives she might have -

“You’re right,” Tzuyu said, softly. “I’m sorry. I promise I’ll find the opportunity to ask.”

And Tzuyu was going to, the next day. Ask, that is, but Dahyun had walked in with a somber look on her face, and Tzuyu had forgotten the words. There was a bevy of guards behind her, but Dahyun hadn’t looked scared at all, just anxious, but anxious for Tzuyu, as if, somehow -

“The one will have to go with them, for a while,” Dahyun said, quietly, but a man dressed in a modern suit and wearing a gaudy eyepiece leaned so close that Tzuyu was sure he’d heard it too. “But this one promises no harm will be done to you, or to -”

“I know,” Tzuyu told her, a strange sort of bravery coming over her. “I know you won’t.”

And Dahyun deflated, immediately, her shoulders dropping.

“But what about you?” Tzuyu asked, and watched Dahyun’s eyes widen.

“What about this one?” Dahyun repeated, as if she hadn’t understood the question. The man behind her tapped his foot impatiently. Tzuyu had watched Dahyun knock down more than thrice the number of men, so there must have been a reason she was going with them quietly.

“Will harm come to you?”

Dahyun stared at Tzuyu, then, and the look in her eyes was almost disbelieving. Then she shook her head. “This one will only be meeting some old friends, Miss Chou. This one wishes not to worry you.”

Tzuyu was silent, then. She could - she could trust her, couldn’t she? 

“Manslayer,” the man said, his voice cutting through their quiet conversation, and Tzuyu couldn’t help but be startled. “Are we ready to depart?”

  
/

  
Tzuyu listened, to the murmurs and gossip, the days after they led Dahyun away. The stories they told each other at the market, the ones she had never enjoyed but always tried to be privy to. For the weight of information, after all, seemed to be far greater than anything else in this age.

The story spread quickly, that the Manslayer was being housed in someone’s abode this whole time, even if they hadn’t managed to find out who it was. But the posters were being taken down, and the police had been around the city, here, looking for him. The manslayer, Tzuyu gathered, had disappeared years ago, after the new government was completed, and upheaval was frowned upon. No one needed assassinations anymore, or at least not in the way that he was able to achieve them. Still, the number of people that were killed ranged from a few hundred to thousands, and Tzuyu had paused, then, clarifying. Again, and again.

But he - everyone said it was a he, Tzuyu wondered, biting at her candied apple - was set free to roam as he wished. To live as he desired, the scar on his cheek his only memory from the war. But no one had ever seen him again, not until he showed up here, in Tzuyu’s school, in a flurry of broken bones and gentle words. Tzuyu stopped in front of a local noticeboard, a vivid sketch of a man who looked like Dahyun plastered onto it. The glue was fading at the edges, the corners of the poster flapping in the wind. 

For one reason or another, the prefecture’s police force had kept them regularly informed of Dahyun’s - the Manslayer, they wrote, in their letters - safety, and Tzuyu found herself holding on to that more than anything else, trying not to fall into a distracted state 

Tzuyu hadn’t seen Dahyun in days - and there was that, all of it, the dull ache that ate at her when she woke up and walked out to an empty courtyard. The worry that dawned on her, suddenly, as she was eating, Jeongyeon chattering away about her patients across from her clinic, and one lady with a rash caused by eating too much rice. 

Could Dahyun take care of herself, with her silly sword and forgetful body? Would she eat, and would she drink, and would she - 

Would she come back? Was she safe?

  
/

  
News came in a letter, that the Manslayer was to leave the prefecture’s hold. Tzuyu ran out in the rain, with two umbrellas, Jeongyeon shouting at her from behind.

  
Dahyun emerged after what seemed like hours, and there was a look frozen on her face when she saw Tzuyu standing there, much like lightning had poured down at that very moment and struck her. She didn’t move, not even as Tzuyu came over, pulling the umbrella over both their heads.

“Have you had your afternoon meal?” Tzuyu asked, shoulder pressed to Dahyun’s, and Dahyun looked at her as if she’d run out of words.

“We’ve cooked extra rice back home, for you, if you’re still hungry. The fish, of course, will be slightly burned, but -”

“You must know, by now,” Dahyun cut in. Her voice so very small. 

Tzuyu hummed. “About?”

Dahyun took a breath. Then two. Tzuyu watched it, the shuddery shape of it in the rain streaking down around them. The soft set of Dahyun’s jaw, and her gentle eyes, ever the same. Ever sure, looking at Tzuyu like she was the only person in the world. 

“The Manslayer,” Dahyun said, brittle as her voice was. “This one is the Manslayer.”

Tzuyu turned to face her, then, and Dahyun’s face was adorned with something so broken that she could not bear to see it, that felt so much like someone pulling at all the strings tangled up in her chest. So she pulled Dahyun forward, by the arm, into the pouring rain. Leaned in close so she didn’t have to shout.

“Tell me then, Manslayer, have you had your afternoon meal?”

  
/

  
Dahyun hadn’t come out of her room once she returned. Tzuyu was worried that she would be packing up her things and leaving when Tzuyu wouldn’t notice, but she heard nothing at all. When night came, Dahyun sat still and silent in the middle of the room, her shadow wavering in the flickering light.

In the morning, Dahyun rose, and Tzuyu awoke with her, as if they were tied together by a thread.

They had their breakfast quietly, Dahyun nursing the soup on the stove like she always did, but with none of the brightness she used to carry out her duties with.

Dahyun looked up just as Tzuyu was scraping her last grains of rice from the bottom of her bowl, and Tzuyu had followed the motion, then, to see Dahyun’s quiet gaze resting on her face.

“If it is so,” Dahyun said, and paused, closing her eyes. “If it is so,” she said again, her hand tightening in her lap, “if it is so that this one has not so repulsed you, already, with this one’s actions,” and Tzuyu wanted to say something, anything, but the faces of a hundred ghosts flashed in her mind, and the words got stuck in her throat. Even then, she wasn’t angry at Dahyun - she was angry at - the hands that raised her, and told her that it was her duty. That it was right. That made her carry the blood and guilt alone, later, after they were done with her.

“This one would like to inform you that this one will be visiting the graves, today. Even though this one is deeply unworthy.” Dahyun’s fist was so tight in her lap that Tzuyu was sure she would be drawing blood.

Tzuyu brought the rim of the soup bowl up to her lips and drank, even as Dahyun continued to stare into her lap. 

“Then I ask that you allow me to accompany you,” Tzuyu said, after she’d placed the bowl back onto their table, and watched the way Dahyun’s head snapped up. There was something there in her eyes - like a reflection of what looked like hope in an old and dull copper mirror. But it was still there, Tzuyu thought. There was still something to be done with it.

Most of the gravestones didn’t have names. But they all had yellow camellia flowers laid across them that looked too fresh to have been put laid more than weeks ago. Tzuyu thought about the times Dahyun would disappear, in the afternoon, out of the blue, and return smelling like flowers.

Dahyun did not weep. It wasn’t because she couldn’t, Tzuyu imagined, with the way she was trembling as she laid fresh flowers over each one, but because Dahyun thought of this, too, as a sign of respect. She was not entitled to her pain in front of them, and not entitled to her grief. 

And Tzuyu did not touch Dahyun, even though she so desperately wanted to. 

As they walked back to the school, the sky opened up and enveloped them in a downpour. Dahyun had run behind Tzuyu, didn’t step under the shelter until Tzuyu was safely inside. 

Dahyun made to go to her room to change into dry clothes, but Tzuyu stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. Dahyun was never going to talk about it, Tzuyu thought, and she didn’t want to wait. Not until Dahyun was sunk inside an endless well of penance. Not until Dahyun forgot that she had a life ahead of her to live. A road to walk on. Tzuyu to - Tzuyu to be there, if she wished.

“Please,” Tzuyu asked, voice thin, wondering if she was being selfish. She settled down on the floor, the coal burning underneath clothing her with warmth. “Sit with me.”

Dahyun looked back at her with something like - it wasn’t confusion, but it was something, burning bright and terrible, that Tzuyu thought she should be afraid. She wasn’t. 

Dahyun took a seat beside her on the floor.

“Will you,” Tzuyu started, then stopped. “Will you flagellate yourself forever?” She said, finally, and Dahyun’s eyes grew even wider. Her fingers fisted in the robes in her lap. Dahyun could kill her, Tzuyu considered. But she wouldn’t. Dahyun wouldn’t - not with her silly, useless blade, nor with her impossible heart. Dahyun wasn’t a killer. Didn’t have to be anymore. Wouldn’t be again, if Tzuyu had anything to say about it. 

“One does not know what one desires,” Dahyun said, finally, and Tzuyu turned to look at her. “What one can - let herself desire.”

Her hair was falling in damp clumps all over her face, cheeks dashed with redness from enduring the summer rain. Whatever everyone else saw - whatever demon, whatever monster that she was - Tzuyu had never been able to see. Whether because she hadn’t wanted to, or simply because it wasn’t there anymore. 

Still, Tzuyu let Dahyun sit stiffly beside her. Until Dahyun reached out to cup her hand within her own, and Tzuyu startled, turning to face her.

Dahyun, whose eyes were wide with - recrimination, Tzuyu thought. It was such a terrible thing, as was the way Dahyun’s fingers were quickly loosening around her own. She made an awkward, fumbling attempt to recapture them within her own, and couldn’t help but notice the way Dahyun seemed to - to keen into her. As if she couldn’t help it. And Tzuyu felt like that, too, so often, around Dahyun, even if she were so much more careful not to show it.

“If you will let me,” Tzuyu offered, carefully, “I want to hear it.” Then, because something about the thunder crackling outside made her braver, she lifted a hand up to Dahyun’s face. Placed a careful thumb on the slice of her cheek, and felt something inside her unfurl when Dahyun’s eyes fluttered closed. Tzuyu didn’t mean for her voice to be wet. “Please,” Dahyun’s jaw tightening under fingers, sending a horrible wave down Tzuyu’s chest, “tell me.”

“All the people one would plead for forgiveness from are dead, and -”

“Manslayer,” Tzuyu said, the word tumbling from her mouth. “That’s what they called you.”

Tzuyu blinked when Dahyun pulled away. Far away from her, suddenly, at the edge of the room, and Tzuyu couldn’t help the helpless laugh that fell from her mouth.

“Dahyun,” Tzuyu tried, too tired to smile. As much as she pretended to be, Dahyun wasn’t a startled prey, and Tzuyu wasn’t going to cage her in if she didn’t want to stay.

“One cannot believe,” Dahyun said, carefully, even as her voice trembled, “that one does not frighten you.”

“You should,” Tzuyu found herself cutting in. Standing up, and striding across the room. It never failed to make her laugh, that she was inches taller than Dahyun, towered above her in these moments. Dahyun could break her apart so easily if she wanted to, with a flick of the wrist.

“I won’t - I don’t need to be afraid of you, because -” Tzuyu didn’t know how to make her understand. “When I met you, you told me your name was Kim Dahyun. Time and again, you have shown yourself to be kind, and to be good, and to be - to be -”

“Miss Chou -”

“Capable of love!” Tzuyu shouted, a little. Her voice going thin. And Dahyun had only stared back at her, the careless mask she was so fond of wearing torn away by Tzuyu’s careful hands. 

“Love in abundance,” Tzuyu said, placing careful hands on either sides of Dahyun’s arms. And Tzuyu’s voice was trembling. So violently, and so tenderly. 

“So to me - for the rest of my - for the rest of my life -”

Dahyun was - shaking. Leaning into Tzuyu’s chest, her hands on Tzuyu’s wrist, holding on like they were lifelines. She had to believe her. She had to believe her because Tzuyu wouldn’t lie, not then. Not to Dahyun. If Dahyun would allow it - if it were proper, somehow, between the two of them, Tzuyu wishes she could - take it all away. Lean in, and smoothen out the jagged edges of Dahyun’s beating heart.

“For as long as I draw breath, that is who you are, and always will be.”

  
/

  
The garden is alive, in its own way, amber leaves shuttering down from the trees like a slow, small waterfall. Happily, it is the very same way that Dahyun presses her hand over Tzuyu’s, gentle and steady. 

At the motion, Tzuyu doesn’t look back at her, and neither does Dahyun. Tzuyu can see, from the corner of her eye, Dahyun’s profile stark against the bushes behind her. Together, instead, they are observing a bright bullfrog making its way up the brick wall that separates them from the rest of the world, the pads of its feet sticking and unsticking in endless motion. Here, behind the wall, Tzuyu is just a girl who’s come of age, and Dahyun is just a girl with an utterly useless sword hitched over the side of her waist. And, and - Dahyun’s hand over Tzuyu’s is just that: a hand over another hand, a warmth over another warmth. 

It’s Tzuyu who unsticks her tongue from the roof of her mouth first.

“We should leave before the sun sets.” They’ve guards now, to patrol the gardens at night, after reports of intruders breaking and entering after dark. 

Dahyun hums. She understands Tzuyu’s anxiety, Tzuyu knows, but Dahyun is also prone to feeling a little content, here, and the sun is still so deceivingly bright, even if the water clock in the corner tells them otherwise. She’s still holding Tzuyu’s hand.

“Can’t we stay a little while longer, Miss Chou?” 

Tzuyu smiles. They only have a quarter of a revolution of the water wheel remaining - practically nothing at all, if Dahyun were to keep dawdling. Still, her smile, directed at the foliage in front of them, is so bright and gentle, the scraggly flurries of her hair framing her face in a manner so soft, that Tzuyu finds that she cannot resist it.

“Only if you stop calling me that,” Tzuyu half-relents, finally, and watches the smile break across Dahyun’s face. Dahyun turns to look at her, and Tzuyu imagines the way her eyes water must be from the light of the sun, scattering across the rocks and pebbles beneath their feet and casting flames in Dahyun’s eyes.

Or, if Tzuyu were to allow herself a little vanity, perhaps -

“This humble one hopes to never disrespect you in such a manner, Miss Chou,” Dahyun says, instead, making a show of getting up to leave, and Tzuyu laughs, pulling her down by her wrist. 

“I believe, as you might know, that acceding to my request would make me a far happier woman,” Tzuyu tries again, voice gentle, and the light that glances off Dahyun’s eyes - the light that is blinding -

“Then there is nothing else one desires more, Tzuyu,” Dahyun says, playfully. As if all of this - all this affection that makes Tzuyu’s head spin - is a game. Sits down next to her, the earlier distance between them now forgotten, Dahyun’s thumb drawing circles on the back of Tzuyu’s hand. Bending down to kiss the clothed skin of Tzuyu’s shoulder, looking up at Tzuyu like she’s waking from a long, winding dream. 

“Heart of mine.”


End file.
